In memoriam: Charlie Kirk
By: James O'Keefe
Charlie Kirk’s death is a “dark moment for America,” per President Trump. It’s also a turning point for you and me, a call to action, and a time for choosing.
But first, let me tell you about my relationship with him.
Charlie was the greatest man I’ve ever personally known. A moral, kind, generous, and irreplaceable man. Charlie was Turning Point USA, the organization he founded. We are sad today because he represented the best of America and what we as men aspire to be. What set him apart was he was the least hypocritical man I’ve ever known. He practiced what he preached in his professional and personal life. As for what he built, I would often watch him work and utter to myself, “He’s a force of nature.” He was a modern day William F Buckley means Rush Limbaugh meets Campus community organizer. It hurts to see him gone from this earth after all that was seemingly planned for him. Many of us know he would have been President one day. As Kierkegaard once said — “The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you’ll never have.”
For those of you who never met him, this feels like a death in the family. For those of us who did know him, we are heartbroken and grieving with a depth we’ve never before experienced.
I met Charlie Kirk at a Chicago diner in 2012 when he was 18 and I was 27. He was persistent in reaching out to me looking to obtain a meeting to receive guidance and advice in what he set out to build. He spoke confidently about his plans to build a mass movement of young people. I remember thinking at the time just how ambitious, grandiose and seemingly improbable it all seemed for this precocious kid. It was a world-changing idea but there are thousands of DMs of people with ideas who talk about the need for political change on a massive scale. Yet few people actually had the X factor that Charlie had. And sitting across from me was this teenager with a half-eaten sandwich speaking with the quiet conviction of Martin Luther: ‘Here I stand, I can do no other.’
I saw him shortly thereafter living on a couch at Lee Hanley’s house on Palm beach island, a donor I was that day soliciting for funds. Charlie was running around the country; indefatigable, relentless, executing his vision.“ Everywhere I go I run into Charlie Kirk,” I vividly recall Rush Limbaugh saying at the time while at Mar a Lago.
A decade later, Charlie built his mass movement.
The irony was it was me, 10 years his senior, now asking him for advice. I had to start all over. He was on the phone with me coaching me through my darkest days. I remember pulling over to the side of the road, pacing through the grass, as we had profound conversations about the difference between knowledge and wisdom, as he tried to help me find God in the face of unimaginable evil and betrayal. I’ll never forget the question he asked me; “Do you love yourself, James.” Then, in San Diego in September 2023 at the Turning Point Faith co, he summoned me on stage with Pastor Rob McCoy, put his hands on me and asked the entire convention center of 1,200 pastors to pray for me.
ask 1,200 pastors to pray for me
But it wasn’t just spiritual advice. He prayed as if it depended on God and acted as if it depended on him. He helped me make payroll one month that year when I was rebuilding. That was an act that moved even the non-believers amongst us. Many others who knew him have stories like this. I looked up to him, and deeply admired him. He was a role model of what a man ought to be; a better man than we, ‘a model of civility and heroism in an age where those things have been under constant attack.”
When asked by a podcaster on how he wanted to be remembered, Charlie said “courage for his faith.” Charlie did not point left or right but up, where he is now.
But now, for our country and at this pivotal moment in our history, this is our generational equivalent to the assassination of Martin Luther King or John F Kennedy.
As pastor Signorelli wrote today, “the devil overplayed his hand, once again, and this will be the impetus for a mass awakening.”
Charlie’s murder has brought out a premonition that we are headed down a very dark path indeed unless something immediately changes within us.
It is not a coincidence that an assassin a mere 200 yards away targeted him in the throat, to send a message they are coming to take OUR VOICE. Charlie’s show was distributed through “Real America’s Voice.” Visual images of this horrifying moment of blood spurting out bombarded our social media feeds, and it was a shock against our conscience, our humanity and it was, as another patriot once wrote, a time that tried our souls. This was a symbol that they thought was going to scare us and honestly, it did.
Now that Charlie has ascended, he has left us with a dire warning and a call to action. The price for his message was his life.
In our country there is a lack of accountability for those who do evil. People who commit crimes don’t fear accountability. Ask anybody at the events he leads and they all say the same thing. You might even be saying this to yourself:
“Those who do wrong face no consequences.”
“Evil goes unpunished in our government.”
“Nothing ever happens to these people.”
“Nobody is held accountable for anything.”
Call it the deep state. Call it the 4th estate or “The Powers that Be.” Call it bad people in corporations and government acting in confluence, the reality is all the same. Justice just isn’t there for those who deserve it. Corruption flourishes, and the light is shined not on the problems but on those trying to expose the problems.
Make no mistake; Charlie Kirk is dead because the people who ought to be in prison are currently roaming free.
This is the principle we must understand. Without accountability, we live under the illusion of freedom.
Unless this changes soon and people are held to account, more people are going to die, and it will be worse than what we saw today.
The question we must ask ourselves, How many more people have to die because we are not doing our part, exposing wrongdoing, allowing or standing by watching those who conspire to undermine the country?
In order for us to change directions, Charlie Kirk’s assassination must ‘light a fire under people who are afraid to act,’ as my friend Lara Logan put it. It does not take a majority to prevail… but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men. All the things he stood for need to come to fruition or we are just posturing, lying about the legacy he left us we claim to admire.
I often get asked by people in politics, “What outcome do you want?” I find it bizarre to be asked that question by those who claim to have a duty to public service. Lost in our politics is any semblance of right and wrong. Ideally, the motive should not be the pursuit of power, but to better society, to Shame the devil, to fight knavery, to knock the bleeding crap out of those destroying the country!
“What matters is your relationship with the truth.” Charlie said. The legacy of Charlie Kirk is therefore; Good people must fight for the right things for the right reasons. To do this we must dig deep and fight for what we love, and to do that we must fight a battle within ourselves. The battle, Roseanne Barr once told me, is within us.
We must choose to love others as we love ourselves. Greater love has no more than this, than a man to lay down his life for his friends. That’s what Christ did for us. That’s what Charlie did for us this week. Charlie enters the gates of heaven with shouts of “Well done, Charlie!” Charlie taught me to expose evil and hold it to account for no other purpose than because the truth is important and it is the right thing to do.
Of course, this is the Dream of the Ridiculous man; “And yet this is merely an old truth, repeated and read a billion times, but still it has never taken root!” (Dostoevsky).
I believe Charlie Kirk’s death is the seed that will finally allow this concept to take root.
There will be people who want to stand up and want to stand down. Jesse Waters pleaded that you can either take that message and crawl into a corner and shut up or you can do what Charlie wanted you to do and speak louder. The future of this nation will be determined on what choice you make.
There are those that deny the reality of this evil itself. But it is a fact that Charlie Kirk now belongs in the hearts of every single American fighting against those who are undermining the country.
The future of this nation, and our own survival will depend upon what choice you make.
God was using Charlie to wake this generation up and despite the assassin’s bullet to his throat — God will continue to use his voice.
A million more Charlie Kirks will now be born.
We look forward to working together to fight evil that exists in this world – and to send a message that the politics of fear will not prevail in the united states of America
